Writing a book -- or at least writing my book -- was a rollercoaster of adventure. I spent the last three years slaving over PRANK THE MONKEY, and I took plenty of notes along the way. Over the next few pages, I'll give you the behind-the-scenes experience of writing a bestselling book: all the fun of being a published author, with none of the actual work.
First off, you should know PRANK THE MONKEY is not my first book. In college, fueled with ambition and a certain amount of beer, I wrote a terrible science fiction novel called SCRAMBLED EGGS, which was so bad that the manuscript actually crapped on itself. Imagine a book developing a digestive system, just for the purpose of soiling itself, and you'll get an idea of how awful it was. The plot was almost completely ripped off from the movie Back to the Future, and I spent a total of fifteen minutes on character development before I began writing.
A few years later, I launched ZUG (you're soaking in it), where I put my terrible writing in front of the public. It was a blog before the word "blog" was invented -- and like a blog, it was a piece of crap. ("Blog," actually, is shorthand for "butt log.")
Slowly, however, I began to develop an audience. And slowly, my writing began to get better, though you wouldn't know it from the paragraphs above. After 11 years of toiling away at the site, I finally landed my first book deal, and PRANK THE MONKEY is the result.
When my own break finally came -- the offer to write a real book, for a real publisher -- it was hardly in the form I expected. That story is coming up next.
Next: How to Get a Book Deal!